Print
The sinking of a trawler-like boat loaded with people in search of a better life in the United States was the latest evidence that tougher border security is driving smugglers into the ocean.
Smugglers increasingly employ boats like the one that broke up on a Point Loma reef Sunday to get people and drugs into the United States undetected, according to border officials. The accident sent 32 people into the cold, rough waters, killing four.
Arrests at sea in the San Diego sector nearly doubled in 2020 from the year before, to 1,273 from 662, according to data provided by Shane Crottie, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Local operations seized 118 vessels in 309 smuggling attempts last year, up from 80 boats and 195 attempts in 2019. So far in fiscal year 2021, which began on Oct. 1, there have been 156 local maritime smuggling attempts, 909 arrests and 76 vessels seized.
(Photo: Brandyn Hill / U.S. Coast Guard)
The U.S. Coast Guard on Monday called off its search for more survivors from a boat that capsized off a rocky shoal near San Diego in what authorities said was an ill-fated migrant-smuggling operation that left three dead and five hospitalized.
The 40-foot trawler-style vessel with 32 people aboard overturned and broke apart on Sunday near the Point Loma Tide Pools, part of a federal marine national monument about 20 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, authorities said.
Officials on Sunday said four people aboard the boat had perished, but the Coast Guard on Monday revised the death toll downward to three, citing information from the San Diego County Medical Examiner’s office.
The Medical Examiner said the cause of death for all three people was drowning. Author: CBS News 8 Team Published: 10:51 AM PDT May 4, 2021 Updated: 11:49 AM PDT May 4, 2021
SAN DIEGO The San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office has released the names of the three people who died aboard the suspected smuggling boat. The Medical Examiner said 41-year-old Maria Eugenia Chavez-Segovia, 29-year-old Victor Perez Degollado and 35-year-old Maricela Hernandez Sanchez all died from drowning.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, 29 others were taken to the hospital with varying degrees of injuries. As of Monday night, five remained hospitalized.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol put out a press release that read in part, “Preliminary checks by U.S. Border Patrol agents indicate that all except two of the people on board the boat were Mexican nationals with no legal status to enter the U.S. One of the two non-Mexican individu